War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [307]
Prince Andrei went over to Pierre, and Pierre noticed a new, young expression in his friend’s face.
Pierre changed his place several times during the game, sitting now with his back to Natasha, now facing her, and in the course of all six rubbers observed her and his friend.
“Something very important is going on between them,” thought Pierre, and a joyful and at the same time bitter feeling stirred him and made him forget the game.
After six rubbers, the general got up, saying it was impossible to play that way, and Pierre was set free. Natasha stood to one side, talking with Sonya and Boris. Vera, with a subtle smile, was talking with Prince Andrei. Pierre went over to his friend and, having asked whether what they were talking about was a secret, sat down beside them. Vera, having noticed Prince Andrei’s attention to Natasha, had decided that at a soirée, at a real soirée, it was necessary to have subtle allusions to feelings, and, seizing a moment when Prince Andrei was alone, began a conversation with him about feelings in general and about her sister. With such an intelligent guest (as she considered Prince Andrei to be), she had to employ her diplomatic art.
When Pierre came up to them, he noticed that Vera was conversing with self-satisfied enthusiasm, while Prince Andrei seemed embarrassed (which seldom happened to him).
“What do you think?” Vera said with a subtle smile. “You’re so perceptive, Prince, and understand people’s characters so well at once. What do you think about Natalie? Can she be constant in her attachments? Can she, like other women” (Vera meant herself), “fall in love with a man once and remain faithful to him forever? That is what I consider real love. What do you think, Prince?”
“I don’t know your sister well enough,” Prince Andrei replied with a mocking smile, behind which he hoped to hide his embarrassment, “to answer such a subtle question. And besides, I’ve observed that the less attractive the woman, the more constant she is,” he added and looked at Pierre, who approached them just then.
“Yes, that’s true, Prince; in our time,” Vera went on (mentioning our time as limited people generally like to do, supposing that they have discovered and appreciated the particularities of our time and that people’s qualities change with time), “in our time a girl has so much freedom that le plaisir d’être courtisée often stifles true feeling in her. Et Natalie, il faut l’avouer, y est très sensible.”*350 The return to Natalie again made Prince Andrei wince unpleasantly; he wanted to get up, but Vera continued with a still more subtle smile.
“I think no one has been so courtisée as she,” Vera said, “but till recently she never liked anyone seriously. You know, Count,” she turned to Pierre, “even our dear cousin Boris, who, entre nous, was quite, quite dans le pays du tendre…”†351 she said, alluding to the then popular map of love.22
Prince Andrei frowned and said nothing.
“But you’re friends with Boris, aren’t you?” Vera asked him.
“Yes, I know him…”
“Surely he has told you about his childhood love for Natasha?”
“Was there a childhood love?” Prince Andrei asked, suddenly blushing.
“Yes. Vous savez entre cousin et cousine cette intimité mène quelquefois à l’amour: le cousinage est un dangereux voisinage. N’est-ce pas?”*352
“Oh, undoubtedly,” said Prince Andrei, and suddenly, with unnatural animation, he began joking with Pierre about how he ought to be careful in dealing with his fifty-year-old Moscow cousins, and in the middle of the banter got up and, taking Pierre by the arm, drew him aside.
“What now?” said Pierre, looking with surprise at his friend’s strange animation and noticing the glance he cast at Natasha as he got up.
“I must, I must have a talk with you,” said Prince Andrei. “You know those women’s gloves” (he